Pay-as-you-go or pay-per-use business models have been used in many areas of commerce, from cellular telephones to commercial Laundromats. In developing a pay-as-you go business, a provider, for example, a cellular telephone provider, offers the use of hardware (a cellular telephone) at a lower-than-market cost in exchange for a commitment to remain a subscriber to their network. In this specific example, the customer receives a cellular phone for little or no money in exchange for signing a contract to become a subscriber for a given period of time. Over the course of the contract, the service provider recovers the cost of the hardware by charging the consumer for using the cellular phone.
The pay-as-you-go business model is predicated on the concept that the hardware provided has little or no value, or use, if disconnected from the service provider. To illustrate, should the subscriber mentioned above cease to pay his or her bill, the service provider deactivates their account, and while the cellular telephone may power up, calls cannot be made or received because the service provider will not allow communication to the cellular telephone. The deactivated phone has no “salvage” value, because the phone will not work elsewhere and the component parts do not have a significant street value. When the account is brought current, the service provider will re-allow use of the device to make calls.
This model works well when the service provider, or other entity taking the financing risk, has a tight control on the use of the hardware. The model does not work well when the hardware has substantial uses outside the service provider's span of control, such as that of a computer, where the computer may be useful whether connected to a service provider network or not. Therefore there is a need to monitor and correct unauthorized configuration of a computer that could move the computer beyond the service provider's span of control.